Mentoring Interdisciplinary Undergraduate Students via a Team Effort
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
9-19-2011
Description
We describe how a team approach that we developed as a mentoring strategy can be used to recruit, advance, and guide students to be more interested in the interdisciplinary field of mathematical biology, and lead to success in undergraduate research in this field. Students are introduced to research in their first semester via lab rotations. Their participation in the research of four faculty members-two from biology and two from mathematics-gives them a first-hand overview of research in quantitative biology and also some initial experience in research itself. However, one of the primary goals of the lab rotation experience is that of developing teams of students and faculty that combine mathematics and statistics with biology and the life sciences, teams that subsequently mentor undergraduate research in genuine interdisciplinary environments. Thus, the team concept serves not only as a means of establishing interdisciplinary research, but also as a means of incorporating new students into existing research efforts that will then track those students into meaningful research of their own. We report how the team concept is used to support undergraduate research in mathematical biology and what types of team-building strategies have worked for us.
Citation Information
Karsai, Istvan; Knisley, Jeff; Knisley, Debra; Yampolsky, Lev; and Godbole, Anant. 2011. Mentoring Interdisciplinary Undergraduate Students via a Team Effort. CBE Life Sciences Education. Vol.10(3). 250-258. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.10-03-0027 PMID: 21885821